22 May 2004	Saturday	02 Rabi-us-Saani 1425

ISLAMABAD, May 21: A two-day roundtable conference on "A new peace - a new war", organized by International Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (IIPCR) of the National University of Science and Technology (Nust), concluded here on Friday.

Minister for Science and Technology and Higher Education Commission (HEC) chairman Dr Attaur Rahman was the chief guest. Earlier, Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali was to be the chief guest in the concluding ceremony, but he could not come due to his engagement in some political activities.

IIPCR honorary chairman Javed Jabbar spoke about the aims, objectives and vision of the institute and presented a summary of the two-day proceedings of the roundtable conference.

Mr Jabbar said some 60 scholars, intellectuals, diplomats, researchers, officials and parliamentarians from Pakistan and 13 participants from different countries presented their papers during four working sessions of the conference.

He said the participants from Australia, Bangladesh, China, India, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States presented some very thought-provoking papers during the conference.

Mr Jabbar said the institute would compile the eight- hour long proceedings of the conference in the form of a book. However, he said, it would take some four to five months. He highlighted some of the important points raised by the participants in each of the working session of the conference.

Mr Jabbar said in the last session, the participants focussed their deliberations on Pakistan-India relations. He said the participants were of the view that both the governments of Pakistan and India would have to change their mindset for meaningful peace process.

The participants, he said, highlighted the human rights perspective of the Kashmir issue and asked the governments of the two countries not to look into the matter as a territorial dispute only.

Former foreign minister and chairman of IIPCR advisory council Sahibzada Yaqub Khan regretted that there were different governments, following different policies but these were not aiming at people of the respective countries. He said today was an age when lot of events were taking place in the region and in the world.

Dr Attaur Rehman stressed the need for making more and more allocations for education and development of science and technology. He said in the next budget, it was expected that over Rs9 billion would be allocated for education sector.

He asked the OIC member states to realize the importance of the role of knowledge and science and technology in the socio-economic development of a country. He said the government had given importance to the science and technology and several projects had been launched.

He said recently a digital library had been set up having some 31,000 journals. Dr Ata said reversing of braindrain was taking place in the country and 9/11 had made it to happen.

A large number of diplomats, former diplomats, researchers, intellectuals and diplomats were present at the concluding ceremony. Prominent among those present on the occasion were Niaz A. Naik, Akram Zaki and Shaharyar Khan.